How to keep new light from replacing default light?

I liked the default lighting for my scene, but wanted to add a spotlight to shine on an object. However, when I clicked on "New Spotlight" it replaced my default lighting instead of adding to it. And when I tried to fix the problem by adding a "New Distance Light" I couldn't get it to look like the default lighting. Is there some way to just add a spotlight without messing up the default lighting?

Yeah, in DS3, it only gives an option to replace if you have something selected... Is it just the one lighting preset that it does this to, or is it any lights preset you load? Might give a clue to what's going on.

Are you clicking on the light icons to create the new light? There should be 4 options in all when advanced is opened up. They should be apply default settings (adds light in the default location), apply active viewpoint transforms (from angle of camera), copy selected item, and cop and replace selected item.

Are these lights presets perhaps? In that case I think you hold the control key (windows) while you add the light and it will give you the option to overwrite or ignore.

It will be a while before I can check on things, because I'm now doing a big render. I decided to work around the problem by rendering the character and the object I want to spotlight separately with different lighting.

The default lighting isn't - it's a light shining from the camera so you aren't left in the dark. As soon as you add a real light the headlamp is turned off. If you want to keep it (and I often do, at a low intensity) then choose the Apply active viewport transforms option. If you are using a real camera it's a good diea to parent the light to the camera so that it continues to shine from that as you move the view around - unfortunately I don't think there is a way to slave a light to the Perspective view.

I think they are talking about the camera light DS uses when there is no explicit light in the scene. If you put a light in, any light, it turn off. It is only there so you can see anything at all without having a light in the scene yet.

But really, put a distant light in at the current active viewport and dial it down a bit and you got it.

Thanks for the suggestion, Ascania. It's something I tried but had trouble getting the lighting to match the default. I guess I just need to do more tweaking. And thanks for the explanation, Richard. BTW, when you mentioned the idea that a light probably can't be slaved to the perspective view, it made me think that you are recommending making a new camera for animating as we do in Maya. Which is why I was surprised to hear the animate2 "Setup" tutorial say that we should animate using the perspective view. Should we use the perspective camera for animating in animate2 and use the timeline when animating with other cameras? If the answer is more than a simple "yes", please let me know and I'll start a new thread. Thanks.

The important differences between the perspective view and a camera are that changes to the Perspective view aren't added to the undo stack and aren't keyframed (and its state isn't saved with the scene). That makes it useful for setting up, since it doesn't jump around if you change frames or undo an action, but useless as a final rencer view. So yes, add a camera for rendering the scene but don't use it for setting up.

If you want the default head lampso you can see what you are doing as you set your sceen up switch off preview lights, in the Window menu.